The conventions of a soap Essay Example for Free

The conventions of a soap Essay To deal with the following issues : The conventions of a soap, the Genre, the target audiences, sound and editing as well as the camera objectives. After initial problems in setting up a group, a selection of four students including myself were grouped together. Deadlines were given and this made it even more constraining. The soap is intended to be targeted to a mainly black/white working class audience mainly but also to a middle class, but not equally proportional. Targeting also a 16 -30 age group though preferably to 16-18 as thats the student audience, but is viewable by all other age groups. The time slot chosen is 19:00 so that it doesnt rival with the other television channels soaps at 19:30, 20:00 and 20:30 respectively. Also at this time most working parents and students would have been back at home whether it be that they perform a 9-5 occupation or unskilled late laborious work. This prequel to the soap is not an easy showing. It has taken a lot of weeks to design the script alone, and to gather characters is still yet an ongoing process. The concept of the soap involves a teacher, a main student as a lead character and then other students are merely extras with exceptions to two other female students who will have a major role in the soap. My responsibility is to be a main actor as the Teacher and to ensure that the soap gets produced, thus I am a quality assurancer which means that the work produced is looked over by myself for quality and then passed onto Taio who happens to be the director to ensure that it is viewable and acceptable for evening time television viewing as well as creating the storyboard from the scripts. Natalie who works in the group is the main script writer whilst Eastern is the associate camera man as opposed to all of us sharing roles as the camera man from time to time. I myself tried to be the camera man for a two-day shooting scene. Unfortunately, it was not at all good. Learning from this mistake I just kept to my role as an actor and both supporting the group when there and looking/editing the work. The first stage in the production process is the creation of the script. This determines not only the dialogue of a piece, but lays down the basis of the soaps plot. In modern television before a soap episode goes into production it is probable that its script has gone through a series of treatments and re-writes. Once a script is completed it is given to a producer whos job is to realise the script. When devising a script, it has come to the attention that it will need a lot of re-writes and perhaps complete changes altogether. Each member of the group has something to co-ordinate with the group as a whole on. We all have individual roles, but due to the shortages in the group of members we all help one another, thus there is no set positions. When developing the soap opera a lot of research was conducted by the group where a discussion of the characters and their personality profiles was viewed. Gender and euthanasia research was amongst the top on the list of the discussions within the group. Age and race was important as it had to show the racial and age ration being portrayed in the college and also what would be socially acceptable. We did not want this to be similar in anyway to grange hill but a real life soap scene. As it had to define possible events that occur in real life with a thrill to keep its viewers hooked. All the characters will have different traits to their personality, one of which will posses traits similar to that of dumbo type person whilst another will be superficially intelligent. The teacher character will play an important role as our research concluded that the teacher would be prejudice to students who are not similar to his norms. The settings and social issues will take place within the Bromley College Facilities and the plot will cover a teacher having taught a class and replacing a previous teacher. Due to stress of his students and how the students support the teacher and how the teacher deals with bullying as an issue. As a girl/boy relationship broken up by a girl having a relationship with an elder man from outside the college and all round arguments and troubled issues relating studies. The characters are from 16-20 in age with exception to the teacher whose age will be mid 30s. Channel 5 does not currently have an active soap and it was the prime selection especially for its informality in presenting shows of interest. The technical aspects of this soap have yet to be performed, although all the roles have been established camera recording has not been fully completed and is still in the draft basis. Evaluation The purpose of this evaluation is to analyse the project of creating a soap and all the practical aspects into the development of such a production. This is after completion of the final practical production. There were many problems associated with the production as there many advantageous developments. To create this production took time and, unfortunately as I had entered the group quite late did not have a stable role as such. Members of my original group had left the college, and thus joined another g roup before that individual was on the verge of being asked to leave the course. Thereby, I progressed into another group, which is currently the group now. However they had started to create the scenes and at the time of joining they had completed the script. Upon joining the group, it was already decided that Taio was the director, Natalie was the scriptwriter and co-director whiles Chris was the editor and Easten was the producer and cameraman. I started to assist as the cameraman, however, unfortunately it seems that it did not work out well. I was zooming too much into the picture frame similar to zooming pan shots in the movies. Although I did not get to see the footage I had taken, the group members informed me that it was bad. I was however still eager to help the group and although they had a different timetable to mine, I still came through. There were more problems as due to the class times of different lessons, not everyone from the team was available to assist in the filming. However, I made myself available or offered to help in all instances of their filming. On some instances, my help was not required as they had enough people to do it. I centred on my acting instead for the group and my role as the teacher. These were actually sub-categorised into two main scenes but were divided into at least 5 or more sub scenes. One recollective event is when filming the corridor scene where Evans played the bullied student, the scene was performed after the 4th repeated time of filming. This was because, at one point security within the college thought that an actual pupil was being bullied, and that on another ocassion the class room scene, it needed to be re-recorded again and again as our postures were incorrect. Taio being the director corrected the problems as and when they occurred and ensured that it was completed. Equipment Used: VHS Cameras for film capture Video Suite for Editing DV to VHS and VHS to DV convertors Tripods Microphones Room Microphones Natural Lighting Zoom Lenses Characters References : Source Materials Soap Operas Unveiled Terrence and Higgins Information on how to create soaps Ins and Outs of Soap Operas J.L.Kenzo Scenes and Practical aspects of soaps Media 1 Stanley Thornes Text Book for Media AS Dyer, Richard et al. 1981: Coronation Street. London: BFI Geraghty, Christine [1991]: Women and Soap Opera. Cambridge Political Press Goodwin, Andrew and Gary Whannel [Eds] [1990]: Understanding TV. London: Routledge Kilborn, Richard [1992]: Television Soaps. London: Batsford Livingstone, Sonia [1990]: Making Sense of Television. Butterworth Heinemann The Media Donated by my teacher Sean Stammers Information on the Media www.brookside.com Official Soap site for Brookside entailing character information www.channel4.com Tallent Information on creating scripts and soaps www.channel5.com Channel where soap should be aired and tv guide listing http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/TF33120/bucking1.html